syllabus

European Cinema and Cultural Studies

歐盟電影文化思潮

Albert Wei-min TANG, Ph.D. (唐維敏) 

Associate Professor in film, media and Cultural Studies

csalbert@mails.fju.edu.tw
http://www.facebook.com/weimin.tang.3
ES318, ext: 2814

Venue: LE 103

Time:   D5-D6, Tuesday

Class blog: http://europefilmcs.blogspot.com

     A.     Goal
    Aiming at combining film policy, film production, film textualization, and film consumption, together with EU festival screening activities, the course will benefit students from attaining more visual experiences and reflexive energy in film analysis, film museum, and creative industries, in order to critically examine image culture in EU-affiliated areas and carefully reflect how Taiwan/Chinese cinema has been received in the mind of the Europeans.

This inter-disciplinary and EU-centered course in film studies will benefit devoted students from multiple academic dimensions, such as EU Film Policy and EU film production as social integration, early film production and texts, New waves and cultural movements, and globalization of major international festivals.

Combining with the annual European Film Festival normally held around December, the course will bridge film screening, film festival, and film cultural discourse, with contemporary film texts carefully selected for audience in Taiwan. The course will also discuss how different screen marketplaces regard Taiwanese film in the past, for the time being, and in the future.

Students can expect more in-depth understanding of European cultural heritage and social integration from film appreciation, film discussion, and film cultural studies which feature inter-nationalistic sentimentalism, identity politics, urbanity landscape, critical cultural policy, and creative industries.

B. Requirement

EUFCS will mainly be conducted in classes and on-line. There will be well-structured screening activities, seminar discussion, lectures, text blogging, video demonstration and other artistic synergetic events. Students will be expected to participate in all relevant activities designed and hosted by the lectures. They will:
    1. Conduct active blogging on-line and hopefully post their contribution on a regular basis. Since students are from diversified backgrounds, they will introduce not just themselves, but also their academic interests on film and culture. They will be guided to present their knowledge on European cinema in a accessible way.
    2. Students will have chances to be familiar with film-related cultural discourse and academic training. Although EUFCS doesn’t require any written exams or quizzes, students will be required to work on a research project (10 page ppt file) on a European director, and compile their notes into a short essay toward the end of the semester.
    3. To better experience the cine-cultural performance, students will be asked to do more fact finding and visual performance related to videomaking. They will make a short video presentation on a European director, and another one on a European city projected on the big screen.
    4. To further promote interaction and vivid discussion among students and with other students, EUFCS will encourage students to visually design their film knowledge with fantastic posters on the city-film or/and the cinematic cities.
    5. EUFCS requires regular class attendance. Students will not be waived from any non-excused absence. Any emergency leading to the absence will have to be posted on the blog.

C. Grading
1.  Academic involvement (blog) 15%
2.  Visual passion (film) 15%
3.  Cinematic dedication (discourse) director dossier 40%
4.  Regular punctuality (all classes) 10%
5.  Project creativity (posters)  20%


 

D.Schedule 
Sept 23   Syllabus, course preparation, blogging, grouping
Sept 30   film genre/ key European filmmakers
OCT 7   Early Cinema (Lumiere, Edison, Melies); Lumiere at company; Vertov
Oct  14     Methods film analysis, Kulturindustrie, Cultural Studies,

Political Economy, Postmodernism, postcolonialism

Oct 21    Chacun son cinema (To Each his own cinema),

Cahier du Cinema, new waves/ Taiwan

Oct 28    screening Metropolis
Nov 4    screening Antonioni
                *director assignment due ppt 10 pages handed in
               page 1: topic,  identity;

p2: abstract, keywords;

p3 outline; 

p4: establishing shots and works;

p5-p8: critical issues;

p9: reflection and question;

p10: ending: depicting Europeanism
Nov 11     Paris J'taime;
Nov 18      Berlin: Symphony of a metropolis
Nov 25    cinema Europe
Dec  2    cinema Europe
Nov 9    cinema Europe
Dec 16      directors' dossier presentation
Dec 23    directors' dossier presentation
Dec 30    directors' dossier presentation/ film museology?
Jan  6    tintin
Jan 13       tintin as inter-European imagology, cross-cultural icon, and boundary-crossing cultural

     production, tintin museum,
Jan 20     revised ppt sent to Albert's office  (two ppt, one on director, synchronous sound screening;  the other on European visuals)

Major topics (examples)
1. European influence: Michaelanglo Antonioni, Joris Ivens
2. European Influence: Early Cinema  (Liumere, Electronic Shadow; Dutch Film Academy)
3. European influence: film festival and New Waves (Berlin, Venice, Cannes; HK, TW, CN)
4. European influence: cahier du cinema, (Yang + Ying) BFI, Manheim
5. European influence: cultural discourses (CS, creative industries, cultural policy)
6. Movieum (London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Paris, Dublin)
7. Cinematic cities, urban films (London, Paris, Berlin, Taipei)
8. inter-filmic-textuality: Beckett, Dickens, Shakespeare, Mozart
9. Chinoisie on European: Kulturrevolution Chinoisie
10. imaging Europe, imagining Europe

Director portray
The following directors and/or film movements will be listed as key filmmakers for our discussion. We will sometimes touch upon other names if necessary. Albert will provide background information, handouts, and useful video clips (online or from Albert’s collection).

Pedro Almodovar
Mechelangelo Antonioni
Luis Brunel
Charles Chaplin
Federico Fellini
Jean-luc Godard
Werner Herzog
Joris Ivens
Fritz Lang
Leni Riefenstahl
Francois Trufaut
Lars von Trier
Wim Wenders
Alain Renais
Krzysztol Kieslowski
John Grierson
Humphrey Jenning
Free Cinema Movement
Dogma 95
cinema verite

Genre

action-adventure
animation
avant-garde
comedy
costume drama
cult
disaster
documentary
epics
film noir
gangster
horror
martial arts
melodrama
musicals
Propaganda
science fiction
fantasy
serials
teen
thrillers
underground
war
westerns

        course sypnosis:
        early European cineam, new waves, contemporary (film)
        literature, arts, film (genre)
        gender, architecture, space, fashion, sister arts (cultural studies)

In short, students will participate in following projects:

a. group project:  director profile (5 pages each student, max 20)

b. European film festival: (post-) nationalistic cinema?  comments (each film)

c. personal projects: discourses on cinema industry, policy, genre, stars, reception and distribution (one-minute video, in class poster presentation, disc-based data collection)